“Confound the fellow! I can’t take up a newspaper without having his name staring me in the face. Eminent lawyer, superior talents—superior—nonsense; I don’t believe a word of it. I always hated him;” and the speaker flung the offending paper on the floor, apparently unconscious that that very hatred made him blind to the merits of the man whom he so berated.

“What’s the matter now, Gus?—angry again? Was there ever such a man!” exclaimed an ultra-fashionable lady, who swept into the apartment “with all her bravery on.” “Come, I want you to go with me this morning, to select a new jewel-case. I saw a superb one the other day for a few hundred dollars; but it is no matter what it may cost.”

“It is a matter, and a serious one, too, Sophia. I told you, six months ago, we should be ruined by your extravagance, and, by heaven! you must put a stop to it.”

“And I told you, twelve months ago, Mr. Tremaine, that if you did not quit betting at the race ground and the gambling table, we should certainly be ruined. You spend thousands, for no earthly good whatever, while I only make use of hundreds, to purchase things absolutely necessary for one holding my position in society. Once for all, let me tell you, Mr. Tremaine, I will have whatever I want;” and, turning to the piano, the amiable lady ran her fingers over the keys, with the most provoking indifference.

“Mrs. Tremaine, you are enough to drive a man mad. Do you think I’m a fool, that I will bear to be treated thus?”

“Oh no, Gussy dear, I should be sorry to suppose such a thing; but you know the lesson by which I profited was learned in your home. There I saw how well your father could enact the tyrant, and how your gentle mother was treated like a slave; and I silently resolved, that from the hour we were married, I would be mistress in my own house.”

“Where is the use of repeating that nonsense continually? I have heard the same story a dozen times before.”

“And shall hear it a dozen times again, or at least as often as I hear the word must from your lips, Mr. Tremaine. But come, you have not yet told me why you were so angry when I came in. Let me see,” she continued, taking up the newspaper, “let me see whether this will not solve the mystery. Ah, now I have it—Robert Dunning, Esq.!”

“Yes, now you have it—that upstart, whom I so hate—to see his name paraded in this manner before the public, is enough to drive me mad.”

“No wonder you hate him, Gus. Only to think of his being retained as counsel for the heirs of old Latrobe, and gaining the suit by which you lost one hundred thousand dollars! Now this reminds me of what I heard yesterday, that Dunning was about to be married to Fanny Austin.”

“Nonsense, Sophia, the Austins move in the first circles.”

“So they do, my dear, but Fanny has strange ideas, and there is no knowing what freak she may perform. However, I shall drive there today, and ask her about it. I ordered the carriage at one—ah! there it is—will you assist me with my cloak, Mr. Tremaine, or shall I ring for my maid? Thank you—thank you—I don’t know when I shall return.”

“And I don’t care,” muttered her husband as she drove from the door. For a few moments he stood under the heavy crimson curtains at the window, looking listlessly in the direction in which the carriage had gone, and then taking his hat and cane left the house.

Just one little year had passed since Gustavus Tremaine and Sophia Warren were wedded—but one little year since he had promised to love and cherish her as his wife, and she had vowed to love and obey him as her husband, and yet such scenes as the one above related were daily occurring. The mother of young Tremaine had long since sunk broken-hearted to her grave, and his father had died in consequence of injuries received by falling from a staging erected on a race-course.

Shortly before the death of the elder Tremaine, the law-suit had terminated, by which he lost one hundred thousand dollars, and on the settlement of his affairs it was found that but a comparatively small fortune would be possessed by his heir. Sophia Warren, “the capital jockey,” prided herself on her marriage, with being wife to one of the richest men (that was to be) in the city, and it was a bitter disappointment when she found her husband’s income would not be one-third of what she had anticipated.

As the union had not been one of affection—where heart and soul unite in uttering the solemn and holy vows—where “for richer for poorer” is uttered in all sincerity—as it had not been such a union, but one of eligibility—a question of mere worldly advantage, no wonder the peevish word, and the angry retort, were daily widening the breach between a spendthrift husband and an arrogant wife—no wonder each sought refuge in the world, from the ennui and the strife that awaited them at home—no wonder that the wife was recklessly whirling through the giddy maze of fashion, while the husband was risking health, honor, reputation on the hazard of a die.

When Mrs. Tremaine reached Mr. Austin’s, young Dunning was just leaving the house, so here was a fine opportunity for bantering Fanny Austin. “Ah! I’ve caught you, my dear, and Madam Rumor is likely to speak truth at last—ha! blushing! well this is confirmation strong—and it is really true that Mr. Dunning and Miss Austin are engaged.”

Too honest-hearted to prevaricate, too delicate-minded not to feel hurt at the familiar manner in which Mrs. Tremaine alluded to her engagement, Fanny remained silent, her cheek glowing, and her bright eye proudly averted from the face of her visiter.

A woman of more delicate feeling than Mrs. Tremaine would have hesitated on witnessing the embarrassment caused by her remarks, but she had no such scruples, and continued,

“I contradicted the statement; for it was impossible to believe any thing so absurd.”

Fanny Austin looked up inquiringly, and the glow on her cheek deepened to crimson as she said,

“Absurd! may I ask your meaning, Mrs. Tremaine?”

“Why, I mean that you would not render yourself so ridiculous in the eyes of society. You marry Bob Dunning—the son of a grocer—you, who belong to the first families, and who ought to make a most advantageous match! Why, Fanny dear, no wonder I contradicted it.”

“I regret that you took the trouble.”

“Oh! it was none at all, and our families had been so long on friendly terms, that I thought it but right to say you would not throw yourself away.”

“Allow me to ask why you speak in this manner,” said Miss Austin, now fully roused, and recovering her self-possession, “if I should marry Mr. Dunning, how could I be thought to throw myself away?”

“What a question! Why the man has neither family nor fortune to boast of, while you have both.”

“As far as money is concerned, I grant you I have the advantage; but as for family, few of us republicans can boast on that score. My grandmother, and yours too, Mrs. Tremaine, superintended their own dairies, made butter and cheese with their own hands, and sent them to market to be sold, nor did I ever hear that the good ladies were ashamed of their domestic employments. Your father and mine commenced life with naught save probity and perseverance; they were first clerks, then junior partners, and at last great capitalists, and we their children have thus been placed at the head of society.”

“I know nothing at all of this nonsensical grandmother story about butter and cheese. I never heard of such a thing in our family.”

“No, I suppose you did not. You have been taught to look on praiseworthy industry as derogatory to your ideas of gentility; but my father has always delighted in recurring to those days of boyhood, and he venerates the memory of his mother, whom he regarded while living as a pattern of domestic virtue.”

“Oh, it is all nonsense talking in this way, Fanny. I wonder what Baron d’Haut-ton will say when he hears that the lady he wooed so unsuccessfully has been won by the heir of a man in the ‘sugar line?’”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Tremaine, if I say you are forgetting yourself, or at least that you are presuming too far on your long acquaintance. My parents have no such ideas as yours, about fortune and family, and with their approval my heart is proud of its choice—proud, too, that it has been the chosen of the gifted, the noble-minded Dunning.”

“Well, Fanny,” persisted Mrs. Tremaine, nothing abashed by the gentle rebuke which had been given—“well, Fanny, depend upon it you will place yourself in a false position. The friends who are now eager to court the society of Miss Austin, will stand aloof when invited to the house of Mrs. Dunning.”

“Friends! did you ever know a true friend do aught that would depreciate the husband in the eyes of his wife, or lessen the wife in the esteem of her husband? For such of my so-called friends as would not honor the man I had chosen, when he was well worthy of their highest regard, I can but say the sooner we part company the better. It is not the long array of names upon my visiting list of which I am proud, but the worth of those who proffer me their friendship.”

“Two o’clock!” said Mrs. Tremaine, glancing at the pendule on the chimney-piece—“two o’clock! Good morning, Miss Austin. How surprised Tremaine will be to hear that you are really going to marry Bob Dunning.”

And Robert Dunning and Fanny Austin were married—and never was there a happier home than theirs. The wife watched for her husband’s step as the maiden watches for that of her lover. Daily she met him with smiles, while her heart throbbed with a love as warm and as pure as that she had vowed at the altar. And Robert Dunning idolized his wife, and his fine endowments drew around him a host of admirers and friends, until Fanny’s former acquaintances, including Mrs. Tremaine, contended for the honor of an invitation to the gifted circle, which weekly met at the house of Mrs. Dunning.

——